Emergent Secures $12.5M in Funding

Middleware supplier Emergent Game Technologies has secured $12.5  million in funding, it said today.

“We are looking very carefully at every investment we make these days,” said Thomas Parkinson, partner at Hopewell Ventures, the firm that led the investment round. “Emergent offers solutions that scale across game budgets, genres and platforms. Further, we believe the new technology.”

Best known for its Gamebryo development environment, Emergent will reveal its new product, promising “development at the speed of light,” at next month’s Game Developer’s Conference.

“As game developers search for options to cut costs and reduce expenses in 2009, more of them will be looking to third-party game middleware companies like Emergent to help cut development time, free up engineering resources and increase efficiency,” said Senior Analyst Christine Arrington of market research firm Acacia Research Group. “Demand for middleware that performs these tasks is likely to remain solid through the tough times ahead and then quickly return to strong growth during the next five years.”

Emergent CEO Geoffrey Selzer said his company has experienced rapid growth over the last few years because it has taken a different approach to the market. “Though the video game industry is weathering the worldwide liquidity crisis better than most, increased financial pressures are intensifying the many difficulties the industry is facing such as bloated budgets, increased complexity of core technology and changing consumer expectations,” Selzer said.